Reading from Bottom to Top

Nov 21, 2005

RAY: After last week's lengthy puzzler with the lights, I thought this week it would be nice to have a brief, short-winded puzzler.

This puzzler was sent in by Dan Cassidy. I had to change it a little bit, but not too much. He did a good job.

TOM: A good job of obfuscating? You wrote twice as much as he did!

RAY: Well, here it is. When you read the English language, you read from left to right. Other languages, like Chinese, Hebrew, and Arabic for example, you read from right to left. But, everything reads from top to bottom. But can you think of an example of when you might read the English language from bottom to top, so that the next line of text is the one above the first line of text?

Answer:

RAY: I did give the hint that it was quasi-automotive. The places where you're apt to see one line of text and the next line of text written above it are when instructions are written on the road.

TOM: Like, "No left turn."

RAY: Or, "Pedestrian Crossing." Do we have a winner?

TOM: The winner is Dennis O'Hearn from Belfast, Northern Ireland. And for having his answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, Dennis is going to get a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com with which he can pick up our new non-boxed CD set. We thought the boxes were kind of a waste of money frankly, but we are now offering the best and second best of Car Talk in a single package for your listening or gift giving pleasure. Now how is that for Christmas?

RAY: How is it? Well, no better than when they came separately but it's all we've got to play with.